Books: The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne

K >> Kathleen Norris >> The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10

They were all chatting amicably enough in the dining-room a few
minutes later when George Carew and Barry Valentine came in. Barry,
who seemed excited, exhilarated and tired, had come to borrow a
typewriter from the Carews. He responded to sympathetic inquiries,
that he had been working like a madman since noon, and that there
would be an issue of the Mail ready for them in the morning. He
said, "everyone had been simply corking about everything," and it
began to look like smooth sailing now. In the few minutes that he
waited for young George Carew to find the typewriter and bring it
down to him, a fresh interruption occurred in the entrance of old
Mrs. Apostleman.

Mrs. Apostleman, between being out of breath from hurrying up the
hill in the late afternoon heat, and fearful that the gathering
would break up before she could say what she wanted to say, and
entirely unable to control her gasping and puffing, was a sight at
once funny and pitiable. As she sank into a comfortable chair she
held up one fat hand to command attention, and with the other laid
forcible hold upon Barry Valentine. Three or four of the younger
women hurried to her with fans and tea, and in a moment or two she
really could manage disconnected words.

"Thanks, me dear. No, no cake. Just a mouthful of tea to--there,
that's better! I was afraid ye'd all be gone--that'll do, thank ye,
Susie! Well," she set down her tea-cup, "well! I've a little piece
of news for you all--don't go, Barry, you'll be interested in this,
and I couldn't wait to come up and tell ye!" She began to fumble in
her bag, and presently produced therefrom her eye-glasses and a
letter. The latter she opened with a great crackling of paper.

"This is from me brother, Alexander Wetherall," said she, with an
impressive glance over her glasses. "As ye know, he's a family
lawyer in New York, he has the histories of half the old families in
the country pigeon-holed away in those old offices of his. He
doesn't write me very often; his wife does now and then--stupid
woman, but nice. However, I wrote him in May, and told him Mrs.
Burgoyne had bought the Hall, and just asked him what he knew about
her and her people. Here--"marking a certain line with a pudgy,
imperative finger, she handed a page of the letter to Barry, "read
from there on," she commanded, "this is what he says."

Barry took the paper, but hesitated.

"It's all right!" said the old lady, impatiently, "nobody could say
anything that wasn't good about Sidney Burgoyne."

Thus reassured, Barry turned obediently to the indicated place.

"'You ask me about your new neighbor,'" he read, "'I suppose of
course you know that she is Paul Frothingham's only child by his
second marriage. Her mother died while she was a baby, and
Frothingham took her all over the world with him, wherever he went.
She married very young, Colonel John Burgoyne, of the Maryland
family, older than she, but a very fine fellow. As a girl and as his
wife she had an extraordinary opportunity for social success, she
was a great favorite in the diplomatic circle at Washington, and
well known in the best London set, and in the European capitals. She
seems to be quite a remarkable young woman, but you are all wrong
about her money; she is very far from rich. She--'"

Barry stopped short. Mrs. Apostleman cackled delightedly; no one
else stirred.

"'She got very little of Frothingham's money,'" Barry presently read
on, '"it came to him from his first wife, who was a widow with two
daughters when he married her. The money naturally reverted to her
girls, Mrs. Fred Senior and Mrs. Spencer Mack, both of this city.'"

"Ha! D'ye get that?" said Mrs. Apostleman. "Go on!"

"'Frothingham left his own daughter something considerably less than
a hundred thousand dollars,'" Barry presently resumed, "'not more
than seventy or eighty thousand, certainly. It is still invested in
the estate. It must pay her three or four thousand a year. And
besides that she has only Burgoyne's insurance, twenty or twenty-
five thousand, for those years of illness pretty well used up his
own money. I believe the stepsisters were very anxious to make her a
more generous arrangement, but she seems to have declined it. Alice
says they are quite devoted--'"

"Alice don't count!" said the old lady "that's his wife. That's
enough." She stopped the reader and refolded the letter, her
mischievous eyes dancing. "Well, what d'ye think of that?" she
demanded.

Barry's bewildered, "Well, I will be darned!" set loose a babel of
tongues. Mrs. Apostleman had not counted in vain upon a sensation;
everyone talked at once. Mrs. White's high, merry laugh dominated
all the other voices.

"So there is a very much better reason for this simple-dinner-blue-
gingham existence than we supposed," said the President of the Santa
Paloma Women's Club amusedly when the first rush of comment died
away. "I think that is quite delicious! While all of us were feeling
how superior she was not to get a motor, and not to rebuild the
Hall, she was simply living within her income, and making the best
of it!"

"I don't know that it makes her any less superior," Mrs. Carew said
thoughtfully. "It--it certainly makes her seem--NICER. I never
suspected her of--well, of preaching, exactly, but I have sometimes
thought that she really couldn't enter into our point of view, with
all that money! I think I'm going to like her more than ever!" she
finished laughingly.

"Why, it's the greatest relief in the world!" exclaimed Mrs. Adams.
"I've been rather holding back about going up there, and imitating
her, because I honestly didn't want to be influenced by eight
millions, and I was afraid. I WAS. Not a week ago Wayne asked me if
I thought she'd like him to donate a sewing machine to her Girls'
Club for them to run up their little costumes with--he has the
agency, you know--and I said, 'Oh, don't, Wayne, she can buy them a
sewing machine apiece if she wants to, and never know it!' But I'm
going to make him write her, TO-NIGHT," said Mrs. Adams, firmly,
"and I declare I feel as if a weight had dropped off my shoulders.
It MEANS so much more now, if we offer her the club. It means that
we aren't merely giving a Lady Bountiful her way, but that we're all
working together like neighbors, and trying to do some good in the
world."

"And I don't think there's any question that she would live exactly
this way," Miss Pratt contributed shyly, "and play with the
children, and dress as she does, even if she had fifty millions!
She's simply found out what pays in this life, and what doesn't pay,
and I think a good many of us were living too hard and fast ever to
stop and think whether it was really worth while or not. She's the
happiest woman I ever knew; it makes one happy just to be with her,
and no money can buy that."

"But it's curious she never has taken the trouble to undeceive us,"
said Mrs. White beginning to fit on an immaculate pair of white
gloves, finger by finger.

"Why--you'll see!--She never dreamed we thought she was anything but
one of ourselves." Mrs. Brown predicted. "Why should she? When did
she ever speak of money, or take the least interest in money? She
never speaks of it. She says 'I can't afford the time, or I can't
afford the effort,' that's what counts with her. Doesn't it, Barry?"

"Barry, do you really suppose--" Mrs. Carew was beginning, as she
turned to the doorway where he had been standing.

But Barry had gone.

CHAPTER XIX

Barry went straight up to the Hall, but Sidney was not there. Joanna
and Ellen, busily murmuring over "Flower Ladies" on the wide terrace
steps, told him that Mother was to be late to supper, and, with
obviously forced hospitality and one eye upon their little families
of inverted roses and hollyhocks, asked him to wait. Barry thanked
them, but couldn't wait.

He went like a man in a dream down River Street, past gardens that
glowed with fragrant beauty, and under the great trees and the warm,
sunset sky. And what a good world it seemed to be alive in, and what
a friendly village in which to find work and love and content. A
dozen returning householders, stopping at their gates, wanted the
news of his venture, a dozen freshly-clad, interested women,
watering lawns in the shade, called out to wish him good fortune.
And always, before his eyes, the thought of the vanished millions
danced like a star. She was not infinitely removed, she was not set
apart by great fortune, she was only the sweetest and best of women,
to be wooed and won like any other. He ran upstairs and flung open
the door of the little bare new office of the MAIL, like an
impetuous boy. There was no one there. But a wide white hat with a
yellow rose pinned on it hung above the new oak desk in the corner,
and his heart rose at the sight. His own desk had an improvised drop
light hung over it; he lowered the typewriter from his cramped arm
upon a mass of clippings and notes. Beyond this room was the great
bare loft, where two or three oily men were still toiling in the
fading light over the establishing of the old STAR press. Sashes had
been taken from one of the big windows to admit the entrance of the
heavier parts; thick pulley ropes dangled at the sill. Great
unopened bundles of gray paper filled the center of the floor, a
slim amused youth was putting the finishing touches to a telephone
on the wall, and Sidney, bare-headed, very business-like and keenly
interested, was watching everybody and making suggestions. She
greeted Barry with a cheerful wave of the hand.

"There you are!" she said, relievedly. "Come and see what you think
of this. Do you know this office is going to be much nicer than the
old one? How goes everything with you?"

"Like lightning!" he answered. "At this rate, there's nothing to it
at all. Have the press boys showed up yet?"

"They are over at the hotel, getting their dinners," she explained.
"And we have borrowed lamps from the hotel to use here this evening.
Did you hear that Martin, of the Press, you know, has offered to
send over the A.P. news as fast as it comes in? Isn't that very
decent of him? Here's Miss Porter's stuff."

She sat down, and began to assort papers on her desk, quite absorbed
in what she was doing. Barry, at his own desk, opened and shut a
drawer or two noisily, but he was really watching her, with a
thumping heart. Watching the bare brown head, the lowered lashes,
the mouth that moved occasionally in time with her busy thoughts--

Suddenly she looked up, and their eyes met.

Without the faintest consciousness of what he did, Barry crossed the
floor between them, and as, on an equally unconscious impulse, she
stood up, paling and breathless, he laid his hand over hers on the
littered desk, and they stood so, staring at each other, the desk
between them.

"Sidney," he said incoherently, "who--where--where did your father's
money go--who got it?"

She looked at him in utter bewilderment.

"Where did WHAT--father's money? Who got it? Are you crazy, Barry?"
she stammered.

"Ah, Sidney, tell me! Did it come to you?"

"Why--why--" She seemed suddenly to understand that there was some
reason for the question, and answered quite readily: "It belonged to
my father's first wife, Barry, most of it. And it went to her
daughters, my step-sisters, they are older than I and both married--
"

"Then you're NOT worth eight million dollars?"

"I--? Why, you know I'm not!" Her eyes were at their widest. "Who
ever said I was? _I_ never said so!"

"But everyone in town thinks so!" Barry's great sigh of relief came
from his very soul.

Sidney, pale before, grew very red. She freed her hands, and sat
down.

"Well, they are very silly, then!" she said, almost crossly. And as
the thought expanded, she added, "But I don't see how anyone COULD!
They must have thought my letting them help me out with the Flower
Show and begging for the Old Paloma girls was a nice piece of
affectation! If I had eight million dollars, or one million, don't
you suppose I'd be DOING something, instead of puttering away with
just the beginning of things!" The annoyed color deepened. "I hope
you're mistaken, Barry," said she. "Why didn't you set them right?"

"I! Why, I thought so too!"

"Oh, Barry! What a hypocrite you must have thought me!" She buried
her rosy face in her hand for a moment. Presently she rushed on,
half indignantly, "--With all my talk about the sinfulness of
American women, who persistently attempt a scheme of living that is
far beyond their incomes! And talking of the needs of the poor all
over the world, with all that money lying idle!"

"I thought of it chiefly as an absolute and immovable barrier
between us," Barry said honestly, "and that was as far as my
thinking went."

Her eyes met his with that curious courage she had when a difficult
moment had to be faced.

"There is a more serious barrier than that between us," she reminded
him gravely.

"Hetty!" he said stupidly. "But I TOLD you--"

But he stopped short, realizing that he had not yet told her, and
rather at a loss.

"You didn't tell me anything," she said, eyeing him steadily.

"Why," Barry's tone was much lower, "I meant to tell you first of
all, but--you know what a day I have had! It seems impossible that I
only left San Francisco this morning."

He brought his chair from his own desk, and sat opposite her, and,
while the summer twilight outside deepened into dusk, unmindful of
time, he went over the pitiful little story. Sidney listened, her
serious eyes never leaving his face, her fine hands locked idly
before her. The telephone boy and the movers had gone now, and there
was silence all about.

"You have suffered enough, Barry; thank God it is all over!" she
said, at the end, "and we know," she went on, with one of her rare
revelations of the spiritual deeps that lay so close to the surface
of her life, "we know that she is safe and satisfied at last, in His
care." For a moment her absent eyes seemed to fathom far spaces.
Barry abruptly broke the silence.

"For one year, Sidney," he said, in a purposeful, steady voice that
was new to her, and that brought her eyes, almost startled, to his
face, "for one year I'm going to show you what I can do. In that
time the Mail will be where it was before the fire, if all goes
well. And then--"

"Then--" she said, a little unsteadily, rising and gathering hat and
gloves together, "then you shall come to me and tell me anything you
like! But--but not now! All this is so new and so strange--"

"Ah, but Sidney!" he pleaded, taking her hands again, "mayn't I
speak of it just this one day, and then never again? Let me think
for this whole year that PERHAPS you will marry a country editor,
and that we shall spend the rest of our lives together, writing and
planning, and tramping through the woods, and picnicking with the
kiddies on the river, and giving Christmas parties for every little
rag-tag and bob-tail in Old Paloma!"

"But you don't want to settle down in this stupid village," she
laughed tremulously, tears on her lashes, "at the ugly old Hall, and
among these superficial empty-headed women?"

"Just here," he said, smiling at his own words, "in the sweetest
place in the world, among the best neighbors! I never want to go
anywhere else. Our friends are here, our work is here--"

"And we are here!" she finished it for him, laughing. Barry, with a
great rising breath, put his arms about the white figure, and
crushed her to him, and Sidney laid her hand on his shoulder, and
raised her face honestly for his first kiss.

"And now let me go home to my neglected girls," she said, after an
interval. "You have a busy night ahead of you, and your press boys
will be here any minute."

But first she took a sheet of yellow copy paper, and wrote on it,
"One year of silence. August thirtieth to August thirtieth." "Is
this inclusive?" she asked, looking up.

"Exclusive," said Barry, firmly.

"Exclusive," she echoed obediently. And when she had added the word,
she folded the sheet and gave it to Barry. "There is a little
reminder for you," said she.

Barry went down to the street door with her, to watch her start
homeward in the sweet summer darkness.

"Oh, one more thing I meant to say," she said, as they stood on the
platform of what had been the old station, "I don't know why I
haven't said it already, or why you haven't."

"And that is, Madam--?" he asked attentively.

"It's just this," she swayed a little nearer to him--her laughing
voice was no more than a whisper. "I love you, Barry!"

"Haven't I said that?" he asked a little hoarsely.

"Not yet."

"Then I say it," he answered steadily, "I love you, my darling!"

"Oh, not here, Barry--in the street!" was Mrs. Burgoyne's next
remark.

But there was no moon, and no witnesses but the blank walls and
shuttered windows of neighboring storehouses. And the silent year
had not, after all, fairly begun.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10